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When Patrick Brown was a boy, his grandfather Walter told him, “You’re gonna move mountains.” By the time he was a teenager, Brown’s family was sensing the first tremors.

Brown’s Aunt Alice and Uncle John Outland had moved from Ontario to North Hatley, Que. Alice was an artist. John saw prospects in putting her designs on clothing. From such whimsical notions grew their successful firm Hatley.

In Quebec, the Outlands had a neighbour named Jean Charest, who in 1994 led what was left of the federal Progressive Conservative party. Patrick Brown was 16 and visiting when he learned this.

“I’m not kidding you,” recalls his cousin Jeremy Outland. “He got up and left, walked out of the house, knocked on the door. We’re all wondering where the heck he was. Of course, his mum goes looking for him and he’s over at Jean Charest’s house and Jean Charest’s wife has got tea out, and cakes, and pies. He was a bit star-struck.”

Apparently so. Brown watched Charest champion the federalist cause in the 1995 Quebec referendum campaign. “That’s when I got the bug,” he now says.

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Thus inspired, Brown was undaunted at starting from scratch. Back home in Toronto, he founded a PC club at St. Michael’s College School. Through university, he travelled the country to organize for Charest’s monumental rebuilding job.

Ontario Progressive Conservative Party leadership hopeful Patrick Brown, a Barrie MP, is squeaky clean and somewhat inscrutable, not prone to effusiveness about a distinct political vision. (Marta Iwanek / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

Patrick Brown greets volunteers at the Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre in Barrie, where his late maternal grandmother was a longtime volunteer. Brown hosts the annual event Hockey Night in Barrie, which supports the facility. (Marta Iwanek / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

Patrick Brown's graduation photo from his yearbook at St. Michael's College School. He founded a high school PC club.

Patrick Brown as a child with his two sisters. Their father was a social activist who ran federally for the NDP; their mother was a school principal.

He was a young man in a hurry. In 2000, just graduating from the University of Toronto at age 22, Brown was a Barrie city councillor. At 28, ink barely dry on his law degree, he was elected to Parliament. Now, eight years later, he’s running full out for the Ontario PC leadership.

If his grandfather’s prediction remains a work in progress, what’s undeniable is that Patrick Brown has rocked the provincial PC party to its weary foundations.

These days, nearing his 37th birthday, Brown is as sleek as a seal, as fit as a decathlete, as focused as a neurosurgeon. He has the gleaming good intentions and door-knocking enthusiasm of a Mormon missionary.

He remains so squeaky-clean — never smoked, never drank — his friend Kevin Bubel habitually refers to him as “The Kid.” Other pals in Barrie call the MP “Double-oh,” having decided he resembles the latest James Bond, actor Daniel Craig.

Yet the diminutive lawyer remains oddly inscrutable, not prone to effusiveness about his interior life or any distinct vision.

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That Brown has never married and remains childless approaching middle age makes him a novelty as an Ontario leadership candidate — a station occupied in all parties through provincial history by family men and, recently, women.

He’s had a couple of longish relationships, he says, but politics takes a toll. “It’s one of my regrets.”

If so, Brown doesn’t seem to have many.

Patrick Walter Brown was born in Toronto in 1978. His father, Edmond, raised in England and Ireland before immigrating to Canada with his family, grew up in North Bay. At university in Toronto, Ed Brown met Judy Tascona, a teacher-in-training from Barrie, and the couple married.

Patrick Brown’s mother is one of five children of Joe Tascona, who moved to the Barrie area in the 1940s and became known as car dealer “Honest Joe.” It was Honest Joe, says cousin Jeremy, who set the family ethos of work, education, accomplishment.

“If you look at our little family tree, it’s basically just a sea of overachievers,” says Outland, now CEO of Hatley. “Everybody had to outdo each other.”

Brown’s father was a social activist who, during the 1970 FLQ crisis, raised money for those detained under the War Measures Act. Shortly after Patrick was born, Ed ran for the NDP in the federal elections of 1979 and 1980 in Davenport. He was trounced twice. So Ed turned his attention to building a law practice while Judy rose from teacher to principal. They also added two girls to the family.

As his father recalls, the first inkling of Patrick’s future arose when he was assigned a grade school project on acid rain. Ever precocious, the boy wrote then prime minister Brian Mulroney with questions. He got back a handwritten letter, Ed says. “That sort of sparked an interest.”

Ed began suspecting politics was more than a pastime after Patrick was elected national president of the young PCs at 20. “My telephone bill was running $700 a month because he was calling all over the country,” Ed recalls.

Patrick Brown’s childhood sounds to have been full and happy. He can’t remember being in trouble as a boy, other than the odd hockey scrap. The Browns travelled regularly to visit relatives in the U.K. and Ireland. Holidays were educational and included visits to Second World War battlefields in France.

In 2000, before Brown graduated from university, he decided to exploit his maternal bloodlines. The Tasconas were well known in Barrie. In 1999, his uncle Joe Tascona Jr. was elected an MPP in the Mike Harris government. Brown, already a seasoned organizer, arrived from Toronto with an all-out blitz of a campaign and was elected to the first of two terms on Barrie council.

“He changed politics in Barrie,” says friend Kevin Bubel. “When I first met him, you could see the ambition. You could see it. You could feel it. It was palpable.”

In 2001, Brown entered law school, choosing the University of Windsor (where his dad had gone) because it allowed him to fly back and forth between Barrie to handle council work. He also worked as a summer student at Magna.

In 2004, Brown ran federally against Liberal Aileen Carroll, but lost. So in 2005, after being called to the bar, he put out a law shingle. He didn’t practise for long.

After the fall of the Liberal minority government in 2006, Brown said he intended to challenge Carroll again. His friends were wary about him trying to unseat a cabinet minister. “We were like, ‘Well, jeez, do you want to do it?’” says Bubel.

Brown did. This time, he won. And in the two elections since, he has won more convincingly each time.

Bubel, one of a group of friends who own a Barrie nightclub called the Bank, says that almost a decade as MP has added maturity and understanding to Brown’s native drive and intelligence. And he’s never lost his work ethic.

Even on vacations with the boys, he never sleeps more than four hours a night. Bubel says his abstinence from alcohol is not “because of some weird strict religion or something.” Brown just decided drinking would get in the way of his ambitions.

So, it seems, would serious relationships.

“He’d probably find a girlfriend would get in the way, because he works very hard and he plays a lot of hockey,” laughs cousin Jeremy.

At home, Brown poses at every ribbon-cutting and with every celebrity he can, bringing his roster of famous hockey acquaintances back to Barrie to raise money for charity and boost his image. He attends Wayne Gretzky’s hockey Fantasy Camp in Las Vegas and was rewarded with the Great One’s endorsement of his leadership bid.

For now, Brown is “a total politician,” says George Taylor, former Ontario solicitor general and local Tory eminence. Brown looks after the riding and “if there’s a program, he finds it and gets the community involved.”

Aileen Carroll, Brown’s Liberal opponent in 2004 and 2006, said word got around that Brown had little interest in policy and was focused only on building a political base. He’s now so infiltrated with city councillors and school boards, she says, he’s known as “Boss Hawg.”

Though toiling in obscurity in Ottawa, unpromoted in nine years to cabinet or even made a parliamentary secretary, Brown chairs a regional caucus group, a rich opportunity for networking. He’s travelled regularly to India and China. Almost every night, his campaign tweets his attendance at a function hosted by new Canadians, where Brown has significant support.

It’s not every Ontario politician, after all, who can cite the wise words of a Sikh elder, or who’s referred to as a bosom friend by touring Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

There’s no mystery to his success, friends say. He runs on work ethic and organizing abilities. And that’s what counts in a leadership format that has more in common with a sales challenge than governance.

“What he’s doing out there isn’t for the cameras,” says Bubel. “Most of what he’s done in signing up people is meeting 30 people at a time, then going to another 30, then another 30 people. It’s just retail politics.”

Yet there are suspicions Brown says “the right things” to people to sell memberships, especially pandering to social conservatives.

Brown calls that amusing, since he’s a Catholic who doesn’t get to church much anymore and his early fear, given his Charest link, was that “people would find me too red Tory.”

One Tory who’s known Brown since youth politics sees such manoeuvres as a familiar caginess. “You never really know what he stands for or what he’s up to. I can’t decide yet if that’s clever-smart or if it’s cunning and deceitful.”

It’s been said that Brown’s liability is not unlike that of Tim Hudak — a lack of presence and emotional connection, a lack of life experience from too early an immersion in politics.

In Hudak’s case, the Tory said, he was over-programmed by the people around him. In Brown’s, “I think he’s over-programmed by himself.

“He’s had a plan from the time he was probably 15 or 20 years old to do what he’s doing today. He’s very calculated, very methodical.”

But even his old adversary Carroll sees his leadership bid as “win-win” for Brown. Afterwards, he’s either leader or an MP with a vastly enhanced profile. “For the first time, they’ve got to recognize him up there in Ottawa.”

Most of his life, Patrick Brown’s been working on that mountain.

“He was a hard-working, diligent, industrious student,” says David Fischer, his religion teacher at St. Mike’s. “That’s how I would describe him.”

These days, so would every PC member in Ontario.

In his own words

Which person is the most important influence on your life?

I don’t think there’s just one I can single out. My family is very close and I draw a lot of strength from my sisters and parents. I don’t see them as much as I used to, but I talk to them every day. My 2-year-old nephew, Colton, sends me video messages that always put a smile on my face. My parents can certainly take credit for my work ethic and my drive — they instilled it in me when I was young. My entire family has been active on my leadership campaign — even my 100-year-old grandmother was selling memberships for me in her nursing home.

What is something people don’t know about you?

I normally have a Red Bull and a power bar for breakfast. I also spend no more than five seconds styling my hair, though people can probably tell that.

What is your biggest regret?

I keep so busy that I don’t have a lot of spare time. But I’ve learned to make the most of what I have. Regrettably, I haven’t had time to have kids. I see the joy my two nephews bring my sister and I envy that. My grandmother made me promise her I would get married and have children before I turn 40, so I have a few more years to work on that.

What is your favourite app?

The NHL app! I don’t think my love for the game has gone unnoticed. I remember being in China during the Stanley Cup playoffs one year. I had just finished the Great Wall marathon and was able to live-stream the game.

What scares you?

The current state of Ontario is scary. We have a government that doesn’t listen to the people who elected them. They’ve lost sight of what really matters to Ontarians: jobs, affordable hydro and better living for all. It frustrates me to think our youth aren’t enjoying the same opportunities even I had — and I’m not that old! Instead, they’re finding it harder to get work. They’ve spent a fortune for education that leads to jobs that don’t exist. (They’re) facing a huge public debt burden, and they’re inheriting a broken government with no plan to fix it.

Also snakes, dead BlackBerry batteries and decaffeinated beverages.

Who was or is your favourite pet?

We had three pets growing up — my favourite was probably a German Shephard named Chico. We also had two cats, Kathy and Patches. But you can’t walk cats. Can you?

What is your favourite TV show?

I grew up watching Family Ties and Growing Pains as a child and loved Friends and Seinfeld. I rarely have time to watch television now, but Homeland is a great show.

Tell us a joke.

I tried out four or five jokes with my friends when I was filling out this questionnaire. It turns out I’m not very funny.

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